Try closing your eyes to enjoy this artwork
A review of Electric Dreams: Art and Technology Before the Internet at Tate Modern
As demonically possessed tech bros appear bent on hastening the end of civilisation, Electric Dreams puts the spotlight on artists whose pioneering work with technology, prior to the advent of the internet, is a reminder that this digital world we’ve inherited was not entirely born of the greed and corporatism which now seem to characterise it. Instead this exhibition recalls the utopian dreams which ushered in this vision. Works from a time in which we might have felt in control of our ubiquitous networks, a time we might still have addressed ourselves to a computer in the same spirit as one might approach any other tool: as a discrete entity.
But hammers and nails are also technology; it’s something which bears repeating. In 1964, German artist Günther Uecker was to drive home this point by creating White Field, a medium sized square canvas rendered hairbrush-thick with with protruding white nails. The effect is gently kinetic, as you move towards it, but as you stand back the nails looks as organic as fur. You’d want to stroke them if, so close up, you couldn’t see the matrix of sharp points, which each cast their shadow, like ones and zeroes. It’s a cumulative effect which is almost out of Uecker’s hands here. The gallery technician who hung this work might also be in thrall to his spirit level and his hammer.
There was never any such thing as an obedient, predictable tool. The telephone, for example, which began life with the modest remit of giving means to converse over distances, is everywhere in Electric Dreams: I, and apparenlty most of the audience, use smartphones to document or commemorate our visits. I’m even now using this prosthetic handheld computer as an aide memoire; but when I come to review these visual notes they may filter my experience according to what became an appealing photo, not necessarily what were the most relevant or important pieces of artwork.
Some artworks invite everyone to get out their phones, let’s face it. They are staged as grand photo opportunities, and one well imagines that their inclusion, in a big show like this, must endear the curators to the gallery marketing dept and outreach teams. Such installations (which very often predate digital photography) now appear made for exploring, posing for cameras, and then sharing via 5G or broadband.
On the day of my visit, one of these immersive rooms was out of commission (I think, it was Otto Piene’s Light Room (Jena)). But from the noise generated by excited kids on the approach to Room 8, Chromointerferent Environment (1974) by Carlo Cruz-Diez was still doing the business. Through digital projection and stroboscopic spotlights, black and white stripes rippled across every surface and everybody contained therein. It was a kinetic, immersive, disorienting piece of Op Art, quite easy to imagine. I note that three other visitors, of TikTok age, have propped a phone on one of the modular cubic seats provided; they are batting one of the spherical white balloons, also provided, between them; they smile and laugh for the phone’s watching eye. This new function of art, to become social media, could not have been foreseen.
Like many artists in Electric Dreams, Cruz-Diez seems to hav ecaptured a moment in which the world first became truly animate. Like Mickey’s broom in the 1940 Disney animation Fantasia, everyday utensils were soon to come to life. Or at least it now seems that way, looking back. Tate’s exhibition pulsates with monitor banks, flashing lights and kinetic, at times interactive, sculpture.
Nothing pulsates more than an object you need not even perceive visually, one of the legendary Dreamachines engineered by beat poet and artist Brion Gysin: specifically, Dreamachine No.9 (1961). A cyclindrical bedside lamp, elongated perhaps by a modish designer, casts a warm orange light which blinks rapidly as it spins, A note on the wall reads, ‘Try closing your eyes to enjoy this artwork’. Light will still flicker behind your eyelids and, it is hoped, generate alpha waves in your brain to promote relaxation and calm. I present it here as a video (above); if you are able to view it fullscreen it might just work for you too.
Our lost ability to stand back from the internet, and the temptation to close our eyes to its dark promise is readily anticipated by the first work in the show. Taking her cue from the neon cityscape in 1950s Osaka, Atsuko Tanaka was to make art’s pioneering venture into wearable technology. For use in performance, she created a dress made with brightly shining tube lights. Tate reports that it was uncomfortably hot to use and that, should it malfunction, it could prove lethal.
I think today we are all on stage in a version of her Electric Dress (1956); we begin to overheat, we need electric power 24/7, and, thanks largely to the Internet, life has become highly precipitous. Tanaka’s crazy idea therefore came to pass, but having survived her performances, the Japanese artist left behind something that endured. My takeout from her example, and that of 70 more artist in this electrifying show, is this: we can be barely in control of our materials and yet we can live to tell the tale.
Electric Dreams can be seen at Tate Modern, London, until June 1 2025.